Socialist Youth occupies Dept of Marine, Communications & Natural Resources

dublin | environment | news report Thursday November 02, 2006 18:05 by Paul Murphy - Socialist Youth

Refine the gas at sea!

Protestors demand:
* Withdraw the Gardai from Ballinaboy refinery site – end the brutality.
* Refine the gas at sea – protect health, safety and environment.
* Nationalise the gas – use it to meet people’s needs not for super-profits of multinationals.

At 1pm today, 10 members of Socialist Youth (youth section of the Socialist Party) occupied the Department of Marine, Communications and Natural Resources on Adelaide Road. They occupied this Department in opposition to the policy of the government in relation to Rossport. They were protesting against the giveaway of €21 billion worth of gas in the Corrib Gas Field to Shell and Statoil for free, the refining of the gas onshore by Shell and the Garda brutality in Mayo to facilitate Shell’s massive profits.

Paul Murphy, one of the organisers of the protest commented:

“What is happening now in north Mayo is a disgrace. On a daily basis, up to 200 Gardai are playing the role of Shell’s cops – beating protestors out of the way of Shell’s convoy on their way to construct a refinery at Ballinaboy, which poses massive health, safety and environmental risks. The piping of the gas onshore at high pressure threatens the health and safety of those living in the area, as previous explosions of gas pipelines demonstrate. The government has given away a precious natural resource, estimated to be worth €21 billion for free to multinationals to add to their massive profits. The Gardai should be withdrawn from the refinery site now and the gas should be refined at sea. We’re also demanding that the government should take this massive resource into public ownership so that it can be used to meet the needs of ordinary people not the profits of the multinationals.”

Socialist Youth member Laura Fitzgerald said “It is outrageous that the Gardai are attacking the right to protest in Mayo. The protestors are ordinary people who are seeking to defend their community against the building of a pipeline that is extremely hazardous to their environment and safety.”

We demanded to speak to Noel Dempsey, predictably got no joy and instead had a polite discussion with Bob Hanna, Chief Techincal Advisor (Energy) - in charge of the safety investigation aspect of the pipeline, who argued that when the gas was given away for free, we needed the "expertise" of the likes of Shell to come here and steal our gas "for the public interest"! On the safety aspect, he accepted that Shell couldn't necessarily be trusted on its own to care about people's safety, but that our friendly government, which he described as "the guardians of the people" had overseen it and it was fine!

We were there for a couple of hours, with a collection of around six Gardai, who grabbed people away from the door at one stage, but apart from that were happy enough to leave us in the lobby. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, no element of the media showed any interest whatsoever!

Pictures to follow.